


Something is Sacred in Your Eyes

by sinverguenza



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12646725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinverguenza/pseuds/sinverguenza
Summary: "The true bliss of it comes in quiet moments.Mike leaves, but has no intention of staying gone permanently. Not from Eleven. Not ever again."A realistic take on young love. 80's/early 90's nostalgia, angst, some swearing, probably some sweaty bodies eventually when everyone is legal, midwestern good sense, and a whole lotta Mike/Eleven.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

For a time, it’s bliss. Mike isn’t a catastrophizer, but he’s far too smart to expect things to go perfectly all the time.

Eleven will never walk with him to Butler Plaza for ice cream at the Dairy Queen. Things that he knows kids do--normal kids that do normal things--those are off the table. And to be honest, Mike isn’t sure if he ever expected that for himself even before Eleven came, and then left. Lucas is right; girls tend to think he’s gross or at the very least _not attractive_. His hair doesn’t flop in the windsurfing waves that guys like Steve seems to roll out of bed with. His mom buys his clothes. His big sister soaked up all the starlight available to the Wheeler clan long ago. And Mike is fine with that. He never wanted banana splits and first kisses. Plenty of time for that later on.

But she came to him. She found her way to him, and Mike was unprepared completely for what it felt like to meet someone like...that. He knows that Nancy gives him indulgent little smiles now. Mike refuses to even engage on the validity of the concept of first love, except for a few subtle reminders about how real it was for her with Hoby Stines. Jake Abelford. Aaron Carmike. Steve Harrington. Jonathan Byers.

And that shuts her up, for awhile.

The true bliss of it comes in quiet moments. First, once the shock wears off, the fridge is scrubbed, and everything set to right--first, there’s her in Hopper’s cabin. She shows him her room, the only space she’s ever had to herself. She shows him her small radio, her fingers running alongside the speaker lovingly. Mike watches her fingers on cool metal. The cabin is musty and old, a grandparents’ refuge for refuse, but her room is cold and fresh, like clean water. It smells like her. Mike breathes deeply, slowly.

He only visits twice before Hopper catches them on worn out couch by the kitchen. They were just sitting there, Mike has no plans for seduction and wouldn’t know where to start anyway. At first Hopper is pissed, says it isn’t safe, that Mike needs to keep his ass inside Hawkins limits.

“Don’t be a selfish prick, kid,” he says, smoke swirling around his uniform.

Mike leaves, but has no intention of staying gone permanently. Not from Eleven. Not ever again.

Eventually, Hopper relents, like he always does.

El doesn’t risk her voice on the radio, but she gives him little _clutches_ that wake him in the night, make him start during a geometry test. It’s not even a voice--it’s just a quick pump. Like someone squeezing his hand tightly and then letting go, twice. Except it’s in his head, and he knows its her. The first time he thinks the worst and ditches 4th period to pedal to the cabin, his hair flying, forehead sweating. She’s embarrassed when he throws his arms around her, just so glad that she’s sitting in front of Days of Our Lives, her mouth open in surprise.

“I felt you...I thought you were in trouble,” he pants into the back of her hair. He’s still holding on to her.

“Sorry,” she says quietly, and then, slowly, loops her hand around his waist.

“You okay?” he says, pulling away from her a bit, but his thin arms are still around her.

She nods. “I was just...saying hello.”

He nods. She brushes at small leaf stuck to his elbow and says, “Missed you.”

Mike’s not sure he wants her to know just how easily she unravels him.

El’s squeezes become so common that Mike doesn’t even notice them anymore. They folded into his life like air, raising him up just enough that he feels like he might survive 8th grade in one actual piece. And so maybe he can’t have her on his arm at Dairy Queen, but she can press against his mind at all moments of the day.

**Squeeze** during Mr. Yancey’s lecture on apartheid.

**Squeeze Squeeze** he says in reply.

It’s not a sophisticated system, but Mike and El are not sophisticated creatures. They are 13, awkward, and in love. They are separated by a couple miles, an overprotective guardian, and years of experience that Mike thinks, sometimes, might give him some clue as to how to make that permanent ache in his gut ease up a bit. The ache that clenches every time he sees El as they sit primly on the porch outside of the kitchen - Hopper says they aren’t allowed anywhere near a “horizontal surface.”

Which grosses Mike out. He hates that people make it seem like that. It’s not. It’s more than that.

Nancy still gives him that indulgent smile, and Mike shoved her one afternoon after she made a shitty little comment. It wasn’t a hard push, but it’s all he can think about after Nancy goes missing.

After two days, Mike’s mom sits on their couch, chainsmoking and flipping through the yellow pages, for what he doesn’t know. There are no answers there. Dad is on the phone, requesting that anyone OTHER than Chief Hopper come down on this case, he’s heard Hopper is incompetent and a Democrat to boot.

Mike meets up with everyone at the Byers, it all feels eerily familiar, and all Mike can think about is how he pushed her last week and never said sorry. Jonathan has already started piling his creepy monster gear into a duffel and Steve looks ready to bash a skull in with his nail bat.

Mike doesn’t know what’s going on - Joyce’s hair is cut into pieces and there are strange markings on the floor of her house, and she jumps into the front seat of Hopper’s Bronco. Mike stays in the Byer’s living room. Dustin is ranting about the Demogorgon while Max has a map of Hawkins all bunched up on the table. Lucas is sharpening a stick for God’s sake and Mike? Mike is remember her as she drove away in the back of Hopper’s car, her face against the window as he roared them all into the inky night. Mike tries not to think about his missing sister, tries not to fall apart, tries to remember how many times he’s had to say goodbye to El and tries not to worry about when their luck will finally end.

Mike is too smart to expect perfect.


	2. Chapter 2

Years and years later, she isn’t known as Eleven. Years and years later, she’ll pay a stranger to listen to her words, but it’ll be more than that. The stranger will have definitions for things, and, when she’s a girl grown, she’ll finally have the right words to be able to understand what it was like to be _Eleven_ , a girl unworthy of a name. 

But that’s years and years later, and for now she’s still Eleven, and she has only some words. She does not know enough of them. Papa and the People only gave her the words they needed her to know. Even as she sits, curled in a blanket in a boy’s basement, she connects all of the new words with their meaning as they slip through her fingers. She whispers them to herself, because speaking is new, too.

There was never anyone to listen, before.

She’s fiercely protective of them, even when they yell at her, even when they scream at each other. Emotion, it seems, is another secret that Papa kept. Eleven will always prefer a fight to the cold concrete of her old room, where she didn’t have a blanket, since everything was temperature-controlled for maximum efficiency.

“Here you go,” said Mike, the first night she slept in his house. “This is a blanket from my old room.” It’s a white and well-washed thing, with faded faces and black writing. _Star Wars_ , it says.

The room is warm enough, so she’s confused when he wraps it around her, his thin arms smoothing it against her neck for the quickest moment. Eleven has never been touched by another child, and she stares at him--the freckles on his face, the way his lips are tinged pink. His face is the most beautiful she’s ever seen. At this point she hadn’t thought of him _that_ way, had only the barest, secondhand knowledge of a thing like a kiss. His face was beautiful in its smoothness, its youth. A smile curving his mouth. A laugh. Tears, because he’s still young enough to cry. The openness of him. He never hid things from her. If she asked a question, he would answer without thinking about it.

Papa had always hid things, which made him hard. It made him distant from her. Eleven didn’t know this at the time. There was no way for her to know anything different. 

Mike, the boy, hides nothing, opens himself to her like a flower to the sun. Mike is beautiful, and Eleven tries not to stare.

So it's no surprise that she will kill for him. Which she does. It’s years before the total morality of death is fully implanted into her psyche. Later, Hopper does his best to hurry it along, but Eleven has many years of Papa’s teaching to let go of. Even though she hates Papa now, hates the memory of her cold room, hates anyone who had a part in her childhood, Eleven can’t let go of those ideas all at once.

So, since she can’t let go, she holds on to something she knows will steer her straight.

 **Squeeze** she sends him, even though he’s three miles away, taking a geometry test, and she knows she shouldn’t be bothering him.

She feels his reply, an immediate thing that makes her feel not so alone, in a dusty old cabin that she’s not allowed to leave. **Squeeze Squeeze**. Eleven follows instructions well, until she doesn’t and has Mike over even though Hopper wouldn’t like it. She should’ve heard the rumbling of the Bronco long before the door was open with Hopper there and her and Mike on the couch, looking guilty for just sitting there.

Hopper is too protective of her, but she can’t pretend not to like it. Not when Papa used to push her so badly. Hopper, she gets, and though they share know blood, she’s more his flesh than not. His first inclination is to yell at something when he doesn’t like it, and even though Eleven doesn’t spend a lot of time yelling, it's mostly because words come second when she feels rage. They argue when they should probably spend time cooling off. For some reason, Eleven trusts him because of this. He doesn’t hide from her. 

Hopper also uses her like the weapon that she is, and for that, Eleven thinks she should hate him but she doesn’t. Hopper is practical in her abilities, and she would probably get mad if he wasn’t.

So when Nancy disappears-- _Mike’s_ Nancy, Eleven doesn’t hesitate to jump in the Bronco. The words are moving fast between Hopper and Joyce, so fast that she can’t keep up. But Hopper takes care of her, and Joyce has always held her like a child when they touched, so Eleven doesn’t hesitate.  
In the car, her face presses against the window, as she sees Mike on the porch. Again. 

**Squeeze** she sends him, as he recedes into the darkness. She sees him flinch, but there’s no reply. That doesn’t surprise her. She forgot to say goodbye.

Her words are never there when they need to be.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time Mike gets to the hospital, Nancy is already in surgery, but he doesn’t know it at first. He bursts through the doors of the hospital, and he calls his sister’s name.

“Nancy? Nance?” His voice pitches up on ever syllable.

Eleven is standing there, her face covered with mud and blood and her shirt is _soaked_ with red, red from her nose running in rivulets. She meets his eyes for a brief flicker, and then she looks at the ground. Her hands shake.

Hopper’s smoking a cigarette, again, and he won’t look up either.

“Where is my sister?” Mike screams, and he flinches when a pair of hands land on his shoulders from behind.

Mrs. Byers puts her mouth close to his ear and whispers to him. An attack. She was maimed. Severe blood loss. Straight to surgery. _They’re not sure if she’s going to make it._

Mike’s face crumples. Mrs. Byers puts his arms around him, which is nice, but he feels no comfort.

He knows that the blood on Eleven is not hers.

Mike wakes up in his bed. His last memory is being wedged in a waiting room chair at the hospital, waiting for news from the surgery theater. There is heat at his back.

**Squeeze**

He’s still wearing his jeans and a dirty shirt, all of which wrinkle and pull his body at odd angles as he rolls over.

She’s there, two hands underneath her head. Her hair waves softly around her face, that one twee curl brushing her forehead. That curl usually drives him crazy to think about.

“Dead?” His voice is parched, depleted.

Slowly, she shakes her head, eyes wide. “No.”

Mike blinks, and lets a breath out.

“She’s sleeping,” says Eleven.

“Thank god.” Mike covers his eyes with one hand, the wetness there brushing his fingertips. “What happened?”

“My fault,” she whispers, her voice barely a breath. “Tried to get there.”

“You did,” he says.

“Not fast enough,” says Eleven, and now she’s the one that’s crying. “She was hurt.”

“But she’ll be okay, right?”

Again, Eleven just gives him a slow shake of her head. “No. Not okay.” Only this time her eyes close, and her lips press against her teeth.

Before he can speak, Mike hears a key turn in his front door. He pounds down the stairs to find his parents, weary and wasted from worry. They are in no mood to mince words with Mike.

_Nancy was attacked by a gang of rogue bikers on McCreary Lane._

(Not true)

_Nancy was found by Hopper, who had a girl with him_

(True) 

_Nancy’s left arm and leg got ripped off. Nancy’s arm couldn’t be re-attached. Nancy is still asleep. The girl carried Nancy’s arm and leg into the hospital._

(Mike can’t listen to anything after that) 

Instead, he turns and walks back to his room. He prays she’s gone. He prays she will still be there. She is, sitting up now on the other side of his bed.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly.

Mike isn’t sure how to answer it, can barely catch any of the feelings that are swirling in his gut. He’s not mad at her, but he is. This wouldn’t have happened…

“Don’t feel bad, El,” he finally says, in a halting tone. He knows that he sounds strange, a stranger to her in this moment.

Her face crumples and closes, and he sees tears fall on her lap. Mike lets out a breath slowly, and then takes a step toward her. Two. Three.

He puts his thin arms around her, hugs her face to his torso while her breath shivers inside of her body. The light from his window bathes his face, and he’s reminded that, somewhere else, it is a Tuesday morning.

Nancy’s recovery is painfully slow. She won’t allow anyone but her parents and siblings into the room. Mike is unclear as to just what happened on McCreary Lane, since Hopper isn’t talking and Eleven will only beg him not to ask her to remember that night.

Mike is used to having bits and pieces of a story, and he doesn’t want to fill in any blanks--doesn’t care about having an explanation for anything anymore. What bothers him is a sister who stares out of her hospital window and doesn’t speak anymore except in terse one-syllables. She won’t talk to anyone.

El asked to visit, which he thought wasn’t a good idea, but Nancy said, “Please,” when he suggested it.

He wound up tugging El by the hand through the hospital as she carried a stuffed white cat.

“Hate this place,” she murmured.

“Me too,” said Mike, knowing that he didn’t have a right to hate it like she did.

In Nancy’s room, Mike slowly reveals El. No sudden movements to scare Nancy. Nancy’s hair is chopped short, her body is so painfully thin that her shoulder blades stick out of her hospital gown.

Her left arm ends just above the elbow.

Her leg is only barely pumping blood through itself.

“Eleven,” says Nancy, her voice as clear as a bell, bruised cheekbones fading into her pale face.

El steps forward. For a moment the girls just stare at one another. Mike is afraid to draw breath.  
“For me?” Nancy says, finally, gesturing at the stuffed cat.

El creeps forward, placing the toy on Nancy’s lap. Before El can take her hand away, Nancy grabs her wrist. For a moment, Mike thinks that this is going to blow up in his face, but Nancy’s face isn’t mad. She’s crying and leans her face on El’s shoulder.

“Thank you.”

El whispers something to Nancy, and Mike sees Nancy’s hand tighten on her stuffed cat, fondling the thing with her thin fingers. For a moment, they are silent, and Mike is feeling like an intruder.

Because he wasn’t there.

Because he doesn’t know how to help.

He doesn’t know what happened on McCreary Lane.

He doesn’t want to know what happened on McCreary Lane.

Part of being...whatever he is, inside of the life of El--this is it. He doesn’t ask questions and probe into places where he is unwanted, unneeded, unnecessary. Part of loving El is to recognize his own powerlessness when it comes to her. Mike is many things, but what he isn’t is an equal. He has no desire to be left standing on porches as she drives away, but part of loving El is to realize that he will always be standing there, in some ways.

After El climbs on to the back of his bike, Mike pedals harder than he usually does. He doesn’t bother to avoid the hills. He thinks about bikes. Bikes are an inelegant way to travel, and he wishes that he could drive. Mike Wheeler longs for grown up things, simple things. He cannot protect this girl that he loves. He cannot fix his sister. His parents control many aspects of his life. He seems to be living an unreal nightmare these days, expected to shoulder an emotional burden that leaves him feeling drained most days. He carries this adult-sized burden aas best he knows how, and that’s fine. For now.

Halfway home, El sighs. He tries to turn around to look at her, but the traffic is a bit heavy on Oak Street, so he keeps his eyes on the road. El slides her hands from his shoulders, wraps it around his middle. She leans her body up against his back and rests her head on his spine. Her breath ruffles the tiny hairs on the back of his neck as she exhales then squeezes him a little tighter.

Mike tries not to crash his bike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos and reviews!


End file.
